[swashmebuckle]

Thanks man, it was a lot of fun to work on.  I'm excited to see what sort of scenario might come of it after all the technical hurdles are...hurdled

[Unknown Target]

Light cruiser/pocket carrier WIP. Carries two to four aircraft.

[Trivial Psychic]

What kind if propulsion does the carrier craft employ?

[Unknown Target]

Electric engines, propeller propulsion (with the lack of extensive fossil fuels and extensive nanobot population on this planet, electric engines were developed first). They'll be nested in nacelles in the wings, I forgot to put them in -.-.

[Unknown Target]

More fun;



EDIT:


Here's the third time I've rebuilt this, so I'm getting closer but I'm missing something...I have difficulty adding small details to objects like these.



EDIT2:

Still working, here's a detail shot and showing off the filleting job I did;

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Here's the third time I've rebuilt this, so I'm getting closer but I'm missing something...I have difficulty adding small details to objects like these.

Bah, aerodynamics don't usually like small details... look at a regular airliner, it's all flush. You still need to add the engines?

[Unknown Target]

That is a good point...here's more WIP, the fillets were definitely a pain;

[ktistai228]

those blades look pretty funky.... not sure they should look this way

[Unknown Target]

You're probably right. I need to remodel them anyway, they were just rough stand ins.

[Unknown Target]

Fixed the blades, did the canards.

Next up is control surfaces, smaller details, and UV/texturing. Basically all the boring stuff

[Thaeris]

You know, that beastie would look really smashing with some low drag gun turrets (mult-barreled weapons, of course)...

...Heck, it would look very good without them breaking up its lines. What I really want to see are some torpedo tubes on the bow of the ship!

[Titan]

IMO, it would look cooler/stronger if there was a second set of biwings at the front, with engines as well.

[Trivial Psychic]

I have a suggestion regarding wing and engine placement.  Move the engines out to the wingtips, where the inter-wing support struts are.  Further in that line however, to avoid the prop-washes interfering with each other, move the upper engine inboard by shortening the span of the upper wing and canting the support strut inwards.  This could be accompanied by giving slightly more pronounced sweeps to the wings, and aft-upward sweeping the strut, which appears to act as a partial vertical control surface.  Another advantage for the wingtip engine placement, is that it would result in less sound and vibration being transferred into the main fuselage.

That bulge on the bottom of the nose... is that supposed to be a down-looking radar of some kind?

[Thaeris]

Personally, I like the design as it stands. It it true that you might be dealing with some devilish interference with that given engine placement (namely as the engines are props), but moving the engines out to the wingtips would doom the ship to a horrible death if engines on the opposite wing were to be disabled.

Rather, if you're thinking at any point that changing the engine configuration would be a good idea, I'd suggest that you create a large necelle suspended between the two main wings with a forward mounted engine and and aft mounted engine on each nacelle. This would ideally provide benficial thrust benefits with a push-pull configuration, and you'd also get a healthy amount of propwash over the wings - it's sort of like having blown flaps without having blown flaps. 

By the way, if aerodynamics is of even just a slight concern, I could post some of your designs in a thread on X-Plane.org, where it might come to the attention of (or I could bring it to the attention of) actual, skilled engineers like Viper2000 (on the X-Plane forum, of course).

[Unknown Target]

Trivial Psychic; prop wash was an issue in that I tried to avoid it as much as possible, but I gave myself a little bit of allowance in the "this isn't real" department. Originally the engines were right in front of each other. I'm really hesitant to redo the wings though, just because they took me forever. And yea, it is a radar dome.

Moving the engines out to the wingtips would increase structural loads dramatically, and any sort of maneuvering would create inordinate amounts of stress on the wings - you're putting a ton of weight at the very weakest point in the structure (the end).

You'll get a not-insignificant structural benefit from the combined tip (creating a box-frame without support in the middle), but I don't think it'd be enough to offset that weight.

Thaeris probably has the best solution, with an inter-wing push/pull pod. I tried a push/pull arrangement before by mounting it in the wing (basically what I have now except each of those nacelles had a propeller in the front too). I didn't like how it looked, but I might try it again. Right now I'm working a bit with the interior, to give me a better and more logical placement of stuff in the exterior.

As for aerodynamics, Thaeris, I am trying to keep it as realistic as possible (especially when it comes to the airships, I really want to avoid the "magical floating metal hulk with tiny gasbags" syndrome).

You're welcome to post it on the X-Plane forum (link me! ), but I'm giving myself a bit of a berth when it comes to realism. Debate on the designs is always useful because I'm sure I missed some stuff. I would be interested to see debate on this design, as I've never done wings like this before.

So yea, when the school year starts to die down again, I'm going to be going at some of the detailing - windows, any weaponry, hangar objects, etc.

I should post the design system I came up with a few weeks ago, it let's you get a reasonable approximation of the airplane just by sketching.

[Thaeris]

AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaannnd done:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=50074

[Titan]

what happened to the kick-ass stuff on the first page 

[Unknown Target]

Thanks Thaeris. I agree with pretty much everything they're saying over there.

Titan; I dunno, that's not really my project. I'm doing something separate, there's just enough technical overlap that I've been posting in this thread. I was thinking that someone might get inspired enough and make the models for StarSlayer's stuff, and that would get rolled into the FreeSkies project. Otherwise it doesn't fit into the universe I want to do.

[Trivial Psychic]

Rather, if you're thinking at any point that changing the engine configuration would be a good idea, I'd suggest that you create a large nacelle suspended between the two main wings with a forward mounted engine and and aft mounted engine on each nacelle. This would ideally provide beneficial thrust benefits with a push-pull configuration, and you'd also get a healthy amount of prop-wash over the wings - it's sort of like having blown flaps without having blown flaps. 

While I am a personal fan of tandem engine configurations, I think that in this instance that the gap between the two wings is so great that the nacelle would need to be quite massive indeed, and thus a massive engine and prop assembly... assuming a true in-line tandem arrangement.  What I would suggest to span the distance, is a stacked tandem arrangement.  Have a tractor engine placed on top of the lower wing, then the pusher engine above and aft-shifted, slung just beneath the upper wing.  The pusher engine could have its frontal area taken up by a joint radiator shared by both engines... assuming you're using liquid-cooled engines.  This would allow the nacelle to span the distance between the upper and lower wings, providing the aforementioned structural strength.

One of the main reasons I was suggesting the wing-tip arrangement, was due to a bit of aerodynamic advantages I read about from the Vaught XF5U, AKA the "Flying Pancake".  Its wingtip rotors cancel out the wingtip vortices, and reduce drag considerably.  Now, I'm not sure how much of a rotation is required, but it might be possible to include small shaft-driven wingtip rotors, borrowing power from the main engines.

[Unknown Target]

Working on getting the mountains down, trying a stylized, cubical approach;